Why Not to Hotlink :D

I clicked on a link in comments on a mock_the_stupid entry about hotlinking and found a great write-up by a guy who basically pwned MySpace. :D (Thanks to holytoastr for posting the link. :D )

Jason Scott has a wonderfully laid-back attitude toward hotlinking, but one of his images in particular became extremely popular with MySpacers, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of downloads per month. Mellow is all fine and dandy but this was getting ridiculous so he replaced the image (a Grim Reaper thing that the MySpacers apparently thought was C001!!) with a goatse. :P

Needless to say this drew some protests [cough] although the persons who protested to him didn't seem to have any clue that they had been doing anything wrong by hotlinking in the first place, and indeed seemed to think he had some obligation to put the original picture back so they could continue stealing his bandwidth. One of these indignant protesters was the HotFreeLayouts.com Abuse Team -- they were the ones who'd done the original hotlinking by linking to Jason's pic in a layout template which was popular with MySpacers and then distributing it to who knows how many teeners, along with embedded ads which means they were making money on the deal. And they seemed to think Jason owed them a Grim Reaper picture and they wanted it put back right now.

[facepalm]

The page is here -- read and laugh. Oh, and although there's a link in there to a goatse pic, it's not embedded; you won't see anything gross unless you click on it. This link is safe. :)